Daytime Is Primetime for Broadband Content

7/20/2004 7:34 AM Eastern

By: Multi Channel News Staff

Boston -- Primetime for broadband Web sites isn’t 8 p.m.-11 p.m., but rather daytime hours, when many people check out streamed-video Internet content while at work, executives on a broadband-content panel here at the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing’s CTAM Summit said Tuesday.

Turner Broadcasting System Inc. vice president of business development Bill Stratton said primetime for CNN.com (www.cnn.com) users is 2 p.m.-3 p.m., along with around 6:30 p.m.

Many CNN.com subscribers access the service while at work, where many of them don’t have televisions, he said. The Web site sees another spike at 6:30 p.m., when users look for news around dinnertime.

“We see 75% of our audience during the day,” Stratton said on the panel, which was sponsored by Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable.

Scripps Networks senior VP of emerging media Channing Dawson said the company sees its highest Web traffic at around noon.

Programmers that supply broadband content for cable operators’ high-speed-data content portals, such as Comcast Corp.’s Comcast.net (www.comcast.net/comcast.html) and Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner (www.rr.com/rdrun), have to compete for prominent displays with other content providers.

Scripps has a library of 25,000 hours of mostly half-hour programs. Dawson said the challenge is boiling down a half-hour show into a 30-second streaming-video segment. “We have to tell the story arc in three minutes -- it’s a whole new game,” he added.

Comcast Online VP of business development Charlie Herrin said the company is focused on offering its users information, entertainment, sports, gaming, kids’, movies and music content.

“We’re not about building a walled garden -- we’re about building a great experience,” he added.